Information retrieval (IR) refers to obtaining information relevant to a request from a collection of information resources via communication networks (e.g., the Internet, intranets and extranets). Search engines have been developed to facilitate IR on a network. Different types of applications that involve IR are available. One such type of applications is a translation system (e.g., translation hub services), which is used to provide users in a global market with texts in their own languages. Therefore, while developing an application to support different languages, the translation system may be used to translate texts from one language (e.g., English) to others languages (e.g., German and Spanish) by submitting property files in one language (e.g. English). During such translations, domains (e.g., subject areas such as “payroll”, “finance”, “human resource” and the like) may have to be considered as texts or terms or words may have different meanings in different domains.
For example, when translation for English term “exchange” into German in a specific domain (e.g., “payroll”) is received, the search space is limited to the language (e.g., German) and the domain (e.g., “payroll”). When there exists German translation for “exchange” in the domain “payroll”, the translation is retrieved (e.g., in-domain search). When the translation is not available in the domain “payroll”, the search space may be extended to other domains (e.g., cross-domain search). Even though there can be an advantage of potentially delivering a result, quality of the result may be affected.